For many Nashville residents, the debate over scooters in Nashville comes down to one main issue: enforcement.

At a Metro Council hearing Wednesday, resident Tim Palmer questioned how many new hires would be made to enforce the law being proposed surrounding scooters and emphasized that if the city cannot enforce it, scooters should not be on the road, he said.

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A scooter from Bird, the ride sharing electric scooter service, found on Lower Broadway. Nashville has sent the company a cease and desist citing obstruction of roadways
The Tennessean

"You don’t get the scooter before the horse," Palmer said. "If you don’t have the people to enforce the rules, don’t put them on the street yet. It's not complicated. We are not ready to have them on the street until we are ready to enforce the rules and protect our pedestrian residents."

Scooter advocates and opponents gathered at the Nashville Public Library downtown to share their concerns with city leaders. The meeting came a week after Metro Council delayed a vote on scooter regulation that would call for permitting and fines for violations.

The next vote is scheduled for Tuesday, July 17, and third reading, for Aug.7. If passed, scooters could be back on the roads by mid-August.

After Bird called the scooter seizure "unconstitutional" and appeared to double down with more scooters, it agreed to suspend operations in Nashville until new city rules were put in place to regulate scooters.

Bird, based in Santa Monica, California, has promoted its scooters as a means of alleviating car traffic, providing new mobility options for residents and reducing emissions.

While many residents have embraced the new method of traveling through neighborhood and downtown streets, others have complained to city officials about scooters obstructing sidewalks and posing safety hazards.

"Residents are up in arms because they had bad experiences," said Gulch resident Barbara Bennett. "There were dangerous experiences. They saw people almost get hit. They almost got hit. There is a lot of emotion in the feedback because the initial experience was so bad."

Bird scooters, located and paid for through an app, are supposed to be used on streets and bike lanes, similar to bikes, and the company instructs riders to not block sidewalks and doorways. But those directives are often ignored by users, according to city officials.

Metro Councilman Jeremy Elrod drafted legislation addressing scooter operation that would include fees per scooter or bike, prohibit sidewalk use in business districts and improper parking and require city access to a company's data on ridership.

Scooter companies would be required to pay a $25 fine per violation and could determine if users would reimburse them for the violation fee.

But some residents questioned if scooter monitoring was the best use of the city's resources and compared it to enforcement of short-term rental properties which has been a challenge for the city.

"This reminds me a lot of what happened with the short-term rental stuff," said Nashville resident Omid Yamini. "Anyone can see how that worked out with enforcement."

Sam Reed, a Bird official, pointed out that Metro Public Works so far had proved effective in stopping scooter usage, referring to the first week of June, when the city impounded more than 400 Bird scooters in a few hours. That is more difficult with short-term rentals, he said.

Sidewalk usage also emerged as a point of contention. Some residents said sidewalk use should be banned citywide, not just in business districts, which include downtown, the Gulch, 12South, because of safety concerns.

"There are too many visitors looking at the wonderful parts of our city," said Music Row resident Kevin Warner. "I don’t want to be the person whose spouse, child or parent appears in the newspaper after being run over and getting their noggin knocked on the sidewalk because someone was breaking the rules of the road."

Under the proposed regulation, scooter companies would be allowed to increase the number of scooters in Nashville from 400 scooters to as many as 1,200, if they proved their compliance with regulation over a period of several months. They also would need to submit plans on how they would encourage usage in neighborhoods with limited transportation options.

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O'Connell emphasized the pilot nature of the legislation. He said that while there are many valid concerns about safety, scooters have also been well-received by many users eager for more transit options.

"For every story of a collision or near collision, I also have a story of someone who said, 'I work downtown, I live less than two miles away and this was a great opportunity for me to cut down on paying for parking or get out of my car and cut down on costs that way.'"